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Abstract. As wildfires intensify and fire seasons lengthen across the western US, the development of models that can predict smoke plume concentrations and track wildfire-induced air pollution exposures has become critical. Wildfire smoke plume height is a key indicator of the vertical placement of plume mass emitted from wildfire-related aerosol sources in climate and air quality models. With advancements in Earth observation (EO) satellites, spaceborne products for aerosol layer height or plume injection height have recently emerged with increased global-scale spatiotemporal resolution. However, to evaluate column radiative effects and refine satellite algorithms, vertical profiles of regionally representative aerosol properties from wildfires need to be measured directly. In this study, we conducted the first comprehensive evaluation of four passive satellite remote-sensing techniques specifically designed for retrieving plume height. We compared these satellite products with the airborne Wyoming Cloud Lidar (WCL) measurements during the 2018 Biomass Burning Flux Measurements of Trace Gases and Aerosols (BB-FLUX) field campaign in the western US. Two definitions, namely, “plume top” and “extinction-weighted mean plume height”, were used to derive the representative heights of wildfire smoke plumes, based on the WCL-derived vertical aerosol extinction coefficient profiles. Using these two definitions, we performed a comparative analysis of multisource satellite-derived plume height products for wildfire smoke. We provide a discussion related to which satellite product is most appropriate for determining plume height characteristics near a fire event or estimating downwind plume rise equivalent height, under multiple aerosol loadings. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the sensitivity of different passive remote-sensing techniques on space-based wildfire smoke plume height observations, in order to resolve ambiguity surrounding the concept of “effective smoke plume height”. As additional aerosol-observing satellites are planned in the coming years, our results will inform future remote-sensing missions and EO satellite algorithm development. This bridges the gap between satellite observations and plume rise modeling to further investigate the vertical distribution of wildfire smoke aerosols.
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Assessing Vertical Allocation of Wildfire Smoke Emissions Using Observational Constraints From Airborne Lidar in the Western U.S.
Abstract Wildfire emissions are a key contributor of carbonaceous aerosols and trace gases to the atmosphere. Induced by buoyant lifting, smoke plumes can be injected into the free troposphere and lower stratosphere, which by consequence significantly affects the magnitude and distance of their influences on air quality and radiation budget. However, the vertical allocation of emissions when smoke escapes the planetary boundary layer (PBL) and the mechanism modulating it remain unclear. We present an inverse modeling framework to estimate the wildfire emissions, with their temporal and vertical evolution being constrained by assimilating aerosol extinction profiles observed from the airborne Differential Absorption Lidar‐High Spectral Resolution Lidar during the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality field campaign. Three fire events in the western U.S., which exhibit free‐tropospheric injections are examined. The constrained smoke emissions indicate considerably larger fractions of smoke injected above the PBL (f>PBL, 80%–94%) versus the column total, compared to those estimated by the WRF‐Chem model using the default plume rise option (12%–52%). The updated emission profiles yield improvements for the simulated vertical structures of the downwind transported smoke, but limited refinement of regional smoke aerosol optical depth distributions due to the spatiotemporal coverage of flight observations. These results highlight the significance of improving vertical allocation of fire emissions on advancing the modeling and forecasting of the environmental impacts of smoke.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2013461
- PAR ID:
- 10378424
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
- Volume:
- 127
- Issue:
- 21
- ISSN:
- 2169-897X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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